Wednesday, May 14, 2014

When I threw up cold coffee and milk
all over that Kansas cornfield
and had to strip down to my little girl long johns
and wait in the cab of the truck,
I whined, but inwardly blessed the good luck
that saved me from shoot or disappoint him.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Woxie Haury (Cheyenne) in native dress and in Western dress on her wedding day.

It took a stitch of Sundays,

but good work has been done.

Tirelessly, our sisters pillowed

braids against the bone.

Twisting, twisting, crossing

until the leather let go.

Homespun prairie lace -

almost white as snow.

Notes: As part of the effort to "assimilate" Native Americans, off-reservation boarding schools became very popular. Starting in the 1880s, thousands of Indian children were taken from their homes. At these boarding schools, the children were forced to give up their language and customs and adopt Christianity. The above picture is a"before and after" shot intended to demonstrate how much the schools were "improving" the Indians. Here's a couple more:

Tom Torlino (Navajo) arriving at Carlisle school in 1882 / Three years later.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Just after she finished blowing us all away with her personal challenge write, Margaret Bednar passed the challenge baton to me. My mission: find a painting or portrait of a woman and let her speak to me (offer advice, comment on my life, engage in conversation, etc.). I looked at a lot of beautiful paintings, but it was this portrait of a young Virginia Woolf that spoke to me.

Monday, May 5, 2014

43 minutes to die
writhing
injection site blown
poisons seeping
into soft tissue
leaking
in the groin
heart limp/lurching
on and -
someone
close that goddamn curtain!

something's wrong
43 minutes
to die

On April 29, the state of Oklahoma used an untested 3-drug cocktail to execute Clayton Lockett. Something went wrong. After struggling for life for 43 minutes (25 of those minutes behind a closed curtain), Lockett finally died of a massive heart attack. At least, that's what we're told.